When I
interviewed Raphaela Platow, the Contemporary Arts Center’s director/chief
curator, several weeks ago for this week’s CityBeat
story about the institution’s 75th anniversary, I asked about some of the
highlights of her tenure.
One was the
2008-2009 exhibition of abstracted and intense figurative paintings by
then-octogenarian Austrian painter Maria Lassnig, who was little known in the
U.S.
Platow had
arranged for the show to travel here from London’s Serpentine Gallery, and it
was presented as Lassnig’s first major solo U.S. museum show. It meant a lot to
Platow, who as a native of Germany had been familiar with Lassnig’s work, and
she was emotional addressing the audience on opening night. (The first CAC show
Platow curated, work by Carlos Amorales, also opened that night.)
Because of
space considerations, not much about the Lassnig show was included in the
story, beyond noting it as an example of CAC’s prescience, since MoMA-PS1 currently
has a major retrospective of her work and calls her “one of the most important
contemporary painters.”
Lassnig
died last week at age 94. So, as a tribute to and remembrance of her, here are
some excerpts from the interview with Platow (that was done before Lassnig’s
death):
“I had a
very personal relationship to the exhibition because I loved the work for many
years,” Platow said. “It was really surprising to me she had never had a show
in the U.S. I really felt she was one of most prominent female painters there
is, and there are not that many female painters of that generation who are not
part of the history, part of the discourse.
“In the
area of painting, it was always the heroic male creating these amazing canvases,
and here was Maria always struggling and staying her course. It meant a lot to
me to present this first exhibition, and ever since then she won the Golden
Lion at the Venice Biennale, and PS1 now has a big show of her work. I’m happy
we sort of spearheaded that.”
Lassnig did
not come to Cincinnati for the opening of her 2008 show here. And as Platow
recalled, it wasn’t all that easy even to get her paintings to town.
“We ended
up taking a show that Serpentine in London put together because it’s extremely
difficult to work with her,” she said. “She didn’t want her paintings to fly
over ocean.
“We had to
separate them out and put them on three different planes. She didn’t want all
her work to be on one cargo plane. And she was extremely afraid of the work
traveling overseas on a trans-Atlantic flight. It was very strenuous to get it
here.
“I was so
happy we did it, and it was a beautiful show and very meaningful for me.”
Read more
about the CAC’s 75th anniversary here.

Exhibition of Austrian painter opens new season at the CAC

It is astonishing that Maria Lassnig, whose work is presented in an impressive solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), is widely unknown in the United States. She is an influential force throughout Europe, working in Vienna for the past few decades.